Our Visitors From The Windy City

My brother, David and his family are vacationing in Utah right now.  They live in the Chicago area, so we don't get to see them very often.  It's been about 18 months since we were last together.  I was wishing I could be in Utah, but didn't know how to swing it with all that we've got going on here.  You can imagine how excited I was to hear that they would be going up to Yellowstone for a couple of days with my parents and would stop by our house on the way.  Hooray!

They came on Friday around lunch time.  We decided to meet them at Big Jud's Burgers.  It's an experience everyone should have at least once.  Seriously - what a hole!!  But, did you know it was featured on a Food Network show called "Diners and Dives"?  David was following directions on his GPS.  When they were almost at the restaurant, he was like, "Uh, I think my GPS is broken.  There's not a restaurant around here, right?" 

Ashley, Alison, Paige, Nicole, and Joshua enjoying the ambiance of Big Jud's.

But lo - what light through greasy diner breaks!  They make a mean burger!  Jenny, Dave and I all ordered behemoth burgers.When we saw them coming out of the kitchen Jenny said, "Ha!  Kelley!  Look at your burger!  It's huge!"  But  the waitress set it in front of her - it turned out to be her beast.  hee hee!  We also ate fries galore and pop, so we were stuffed by the time we left. 

Dig in, Jen!  Grandpa Smith's gotta get a picture of this!

A few minutes later, Josh started running on the benches and he knocked that poster hanging above Ashley on her head.

My burger.  The Mother Lode.  Ham, bacon, pastrami, mushrooms, onion rings.  It commands respect.

It was so fun to see Dave's family.  They are the most fun, laid back and loving people!  Jen just loved Bronson to death, even though he tried to poop all over her.  She wanted to sit by him at the restaurant and play with him all afternoon.  David and Josh are currently best friends.  Josh is pretty shy, but he latched on to Dave and they played dinosaurs for a long time together.  Dave is a good dinosaur player - way more fun than me!  Just ask Josh.  Ashley is getting so old!  She was the first grandchild in our family and I'd never loved anyone like I loved her when she was a baby! It was the closest thing I'd experienced to mother-love until I actually became a mother myself.  She's still adorable to me in every way!  Paige is about one month younger than Alison.  She had a blast playing with both of my little girls.  They were out in the yard and running through the house playing various make-believe games.  I tried to get a picture of them a couple of times, but they were either in the playhouse or too far back in the pasture.   You'll just have to believe me when I say they were cute. 

Meeting the animals. 

Josh and his new best friend, Uncle Dave.

Grandpa Smith was totally excited...

Ashley and Bronson.

They only stayed a few hours, but we had a lot of fun visiting with them.  It was fun to show them our animals, garden, and share our country life for a while.  Maybe some day we'll show our kids the big city where they live.

I Heard What You Meant

This morning, we drove past a dead cat in the middle of the road.  Alison, a self-professed animal lover, started fake crying and wailing.  Nicole listened for a few minutes, then calmly said, "Alison, just give it a grip!" 

Father's Day

I'm not sure if Father's Day was very fun for David or not this year.  Parts of it were really nice.  Other parts, not so much. It started out with him getting up early with the kids and letting me sleep in.  What kind of mom lets her husband get up with the kids on Father's Day?!?!  The tired kind, that's what.  Anyway, I couldn't sleep knowing that he was up, so I got the presents out and let the kids give them to Dad.  He got a video, a tie, some Haagendas ice cream, a candy bar card, and an ipod (actually, David had been saving for the ipod for a while, we just paid the difference between what he had saved and what it cost.)  I think he was legitimately surprised by a couple of the presents, and thrilled with the one he knew he was getting. 


He's not sleeping, he's in musical bliss.

All day long the kids were full of hugs and kisses and sweet sayings like "I love you" and "Happy Father's Day."  Josh has been wishing me a Happy Father's Day ever since.  It's so fun to watch the kids get excited about making Dad's say special.  They tried extra hard to be obedient and happy. 

Church was nice...for me.  I was speaking in sacrament meeting and substituting for the primary chorister, so David had the kids with him the whole time.  Luckily for him, Grandma and Grandpa Gee came and helped him wrestle the kids during sacrament meeting.  Bronson's present to Dad was falling asleep during Elders Quorum meeting.

After church, we stopped at the house to change clothes and pick up presents, then we drove to Grandma and Grandpa Gee's house.  Sue, Kristi's family, and Grandma Shirley were all there too.  We ate a delicious dinner consisting of some of the fathers' favorite foods.  I brought cheesy potatoes for David.  Then, we had a little Fathers' Day/birthday party for Grandpa Gee.  His birthday was actually the following day, but he and Grandma planned on doing something alone then.  So we celebrated all at once.  There was both a chocolate birthday cake and an ice cream cake to choose from.  Yum!  We had a fun visit and stayed until it was past the kids bed time.

I hope David had a nice day.  It wasn't really that different from any other day.  The kids and I sure love that man.  I think we try pretty hard to show him that every day, so maybe that's why Father's Day seemed pretty normal.

Take that, Metal Post!

The other morning, I was weeding my flower bed while the kids played in the yard.  Nicki walked up to a metal post in the garden.  She pointed a stick at it and said, "Hello.  My name is Nicole Gee. You killed my father.  Prepare to die."  Then she wacked it with her stick and walked away.  Gotta love her.

Catch Up

It took me so long to write about our vacation that nearly two weeks have passed by since we came home.  I need to play catch up so that I don't forget every thing that's happened.  Actually, I think I've forgotten most of it, so here's a few brief highlights.

We spent the Saturday we returned from vacation working on the garden and goat shed.  We worked all day, but didn't get finished.  It felt like we hardly got started!  What a state our yard was in!  On Monday, between dentist appointments and grocery shopping (I made sure the fridge was pretty cleaned out before we left) the kids and I got the garden planted.  Just in the nick of time too!  It rained most of that week, beginning just a few hours after we finished planting.  That evening, when the boys were in bed, David and I had to disbud our baby goats.  As in...we had to burn the little horn buds that were growing. It was pretty sad, but its better for both the goats and us if they don't have horns.  Thank heavens for David Gee.  He's amazing! 

On Tuesday, Bronson had a doctor's appointment to get immunized.  He's always a big hit with the nurses.  Such a cute, happy, chubby baby with fuzzy hair.  He's irresistible!  He didn't pass out when they gave him his shots, so I was thrilled.  We went from the doc to the library to sign our kids up for the summer reading program.  Then, we took Ali to the dentist to have a cavity filled. 




 Don't worry - I won't give that much detail on every day, but Tuesday was an important day.  That's the day Licorice had her kids.  I sent the girls out in the afternoon to see how the three babies we disbudded were holding up.  After a minute or two, Nicole came running in the house saying that there were two more babies in the shed.  They were already dry and walking around.  Who knows when she had them - I'm sure it wasn't the night before because we were out there disbudding.  Anyway, Licorice's babies share a birthday with my dad and my brother-in-law, Brian.  She had a boy and a girl.  Licorice must have had some Alpine blood in her because her kids' ears stick out more than Clover's kids do.  Theirs are more floppy like a Nubian.  Licorice is still grumpy with Clover's kids.  She tries to keep her kids away from them.  The snob!

Woah - Licorice looks kind of scary in this picture.

The rest of the time has been filled with play dates and weeding and other such activities.  It's been raining an awful lot.  We've yet to have a good hot day.  I wonder if our garden will even get the chance to grow.  Not that I'd feel too bad if it didn't - I could use a break. 

I wouldn't normally share this story, but Alison specifically asked if I would please blog about it.  Last week, she  found a fish in our ditch.  The very back of our property has a ditch running through it because of our water shares.  We fenced our kids out of it long ago, but they still like to go back there to throw rocks, etc.  Well, the ditch was empty and Ali saw a huge trash fish lying in a little puddle.  It was probably 14 inches long, I'd guess.  The puddle was almost dry and the fish was half out of the water, suffocating.  So David climbed over the fence and put the fish out of its misery.  Then, Ali spent the next half hour or more studying it and showing it off to her siblings and toting it around in a little sand pail.  After a while, she said it started to stink, so she threw it back over the fence into the ditch.  I'm sure some neighborhood dog (or maybe a cat, fox, skunk or some other creature) was very happy.  Such id the life of a country girl.

On Monday, June 12th, I got up and worked around the house so that I could hit the garden during Bronson's morning nap.  Bron wakes up around 5:45 am so his first nap is usually around 8:00 am.  I know, I know,  normal people don't even wake up before 9:00 am, but not around here.  Anyway.  We had just gone out to the yard.  I was still feeding the animals when Nicole ran to me and said that Josh fell down.  I heard him crying behind our goat shed where Dave is building a bigger shed.  I started walking over.  When I saw him, I gasped.  He had a huge bump on his head already.  It was the size of an egg and growing.  I guess he tripped on some railroad ties out in the pasture.  He was probably trying to do what the baby goats were doing.  He's just not as spry as a baby goat.  I scooped him up and brought him into the house.  I called Dave, who said it was probably okay if the swelling was on the outside of his skull, but just to be safe, I should take him into the doctor's office.  So Monday morning, 9:00 am, we were one of the first people to see the urgent care doctor.  Every person who looked at him would gasp.  It was a doozy of a wound!  Anyway, to make a long story short, Josh lived.  He didn't really have any problems, other than a nasty looking bump which drained into two black eyes in a few days.   We had to watch him for the first 24 hours, but he was fine.  The doctor said, "Why do I get the feeling this won't be the last time I see him?"  That's the truth!  He's like a Kamikaze that's  little bit clumsy and doesn't always think through the consequences of his actions.

About 4 hours after the injury.  It looks so much better than it did at first.

Man, the camera just doesn't do that thing justice.

The next day.  Changing color and draining into his bridge.

Double black eyes - much worse in real life.  The flash makes them look pretty good.

That's about all I can think of right now.  David and I both have foot injuries and neither of us know what we did to get them.  Dave borrowed his dad's riding lawn mower today.  It was amazing. He mowed the lawn in less than 1/3 the normal time and it looks so nice too!  We really need a riding lawn mower. 

Vacation: Day Five

I woke up Friday morning thinking, "Well, we've come to the final day of our vacation.  It's been so much fun, but we are totally exhausted.  We're also starting to feel the pull of our responsibilities at home.  I'm stressed out about the baby goats and the other pregnant goat at home.  David is not sure how he can get the lawn mowed and the garden planted and everything else that needs to be done in our yard. I'm sad that its almost over, but it's time to go home."

The day started out with a 9:00am hair appointment for me.  Earlier in the week, my mom saw a coupon for a great hair color deal.  She'd been wanting me to go back to blond for a long time.  I was ready for it - in fact, on the last day of school I tried to dye it blond myself.  It was too close to my natural shade to tell much of a difference, though.  So, I went into a salon by my parents house and I came out a new woman!  I loved my new hair color.  So did David.  What a great souvineer! 

When I got back, my mom and I took Bronson to a restaurant she'd been wanting to show me.  It's called Plates and Palates.  It's run by a family in their neighborhood.  The wife goes in early in the morning and bakes the desserts for the day. Then, she goes home to be with the kids and her husband and his brother go in to run the place.  They're only open for lunch and one night per week.  They make about 10 or 15 things per day, mostly sandwiches, salads and a soup or two. They write the menu on a white board and when a dish is gone, they just erase it.  The food is AMAZING and they have a huge following.  The men are probably home in the afternoon.  What a life!  That sounds like a really fun set-up.  I had a delicious salad combo and a coconut cheesecake.  Out of this world!  Meanwhile, David and Grandpa Smith took the kids to McDonald's.  Honestly, they probably liked their burgers as much as I liked my fancy food.

We met after lunch at the Hill Air Force Base Museum.  We had a good time looking at all the planes and jets.  The coolest part was the "discovery center" for kids.  They had all sorts of things to teach physics and aerodynamics and construction and other stuff.  Then, they helped our kids make paper rockets and we took them into the courtyard for a launch.  The had some sort of air pressure launcher that shot them 50 feet in the air or more. The kids got to hit the launch button for their own rocket. It was fun.

That is a big plane!  Look how little my family is under there.

What a stunning blond! He he.

The family.

Waiting for their turn to launch their rockets.

Three, two, one, blast off!

Even Josh got to push the button.

Where did it go?

Grandpa had to go to work in the afternoon, but the rest of us got a frozen yogurt at Orange Blossom.  That's one of those joints where you pay by the ounce and you can make any concoction you can dream up.  The kids loved it!

That evening I picked up Katie and we went to our old high school to attend a retirement celebration for our modern dance teacher, Mrs. Clifford.  She'd been teaching for 34 years and she really was an outstanding teacher.  She inspired and empowered so many students over the years including me and I was glad to have been in town so that I could attend.  The program was very nice, if a little eccentric (but hey - Mrs. Clifford is a performer.  It was totally appropriate for her!)  Let's just say that Katie and I both declined the offer to improv dance with the other 30-something-year-old alumni.  I guess our self esteem isn't quite as high as some of the others.  We did get the opportunity to talk to her and give her letters of appreciation that we all wrote.  I also loved the opportunity to see some of my close friends from high school dance, many of which I hadn't seen in a decade or more. 



The fabulous Mrs. Clifford!



My best friend in high school, Tanna.

When I got back to my parents house at 8:30pm, I expected to find the kids asleep and David ready to load up the van.  Our plan was to leave first thing in the morning and eat somewhere on the road.  However, all the kids were awake and David was ready to leave that night.  He said they were all packed and he couldn't see any reason to wait.  He loaded up the van while I fed Bronson.  My parents were gone at the time, but they walked in the door right as we were finishing our hit-the-road prayer.  We said goodbye and were on the road around 9:15pm.  The kids eventually fell asleep and things went pretty smoothly.  Josh kept waking up and crying.  He was pretty uncomfortable.  But we survived.  We pulled in to our driveway at about 1:00am.  Our house was clean, as we left it.  Our animals were all fine, and to our surprise, our lawn was newly mowed!  Thanks to Grandpa Gee, we had three extra hours to do our garden work the next day!

And that was our family vacation for 2011.  What a fun, memorable trip! 

Vacation: Day Four

Thursday was a bit rainy and cool.  Boy, was I glad we did the outdoor activities on the two really beautiful days before.  We started out day four a little more slowly, just hanging around Grandma's house and making sure Josh took an early nap.  At about 11:30am, we went to the Front Runner Station in Farmington.  The Front Runner is the train that runs from Ogden to Salt Lake.  Josh loves trains, so I knew it would be a big hit. 

Waiting for the train.

Here it comes!

Look at that excitement.

The Front Runner dropped us off at the main Salt Lake station, where we hopped on a TRAX train (the intra-city train system).  The TRAX train took us to the Gateway Shopping Center.  We planned on eating lunch at the Happy Sumo Japanese restaurant.  My sister told me that the kid's bento boxes are cheap and delicious.  However, when we got to the Gateway, I saw the sign for Tucano's Brazilian Grille and I wanted to take the kids there instead.  As I expected, they were totally amazed by the size and scope of the salad bar.  They had everything you could want - it was like a fancy Chuck-A Rama (their favorite restaurant in the world).  I'd say the cheesy rolls, cinnamon sugar fried bananas, and quail eggs were the top three things, but they ate a ton of other stuff too.  We all got our own flavored Brazilian Lemonades - sweet nectar from heaven.   Then, the meat started coming around.  The kids loved grabbing the meat with their own little tongs.  Josh ate more than the rest of us, I think.  He ate a ton of food!  Of course, I'm kidding.  No one can eat more than Dave or I (there's a bit of debate over which of us out-ate the other).  We both paid the price of over eating for the rest of the day, but I thought it was totally worth it.

After lunch, we met Katie, Megan and Adam at the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum.  Wow!  That's all I can say about that place.  It is like kid heaven.  I can't begin to describe all the fun things they have there, from plain old blocks (and I mean EVERY kind of block ever invented) to high-tech video equipment and literally everything in between.  If we didn't have a two-year old with us, we could have spent all day.  As it was, we were there for a few hours.  We played with balls, on a farm, in a grocery store, and on a climbing wall.  We put on full-costumed productions on a stage, made cartoon strips in an artist's studio, flew a helicoptor, starred in and manned a newscast, tested our paper airplanes in a wind tunnel, and many other cool things.  When Josh started taking toys away from strangers, we knew he had maxed out and we needed to leave.  However, the biggest boy, David, wasn't quite ready until he finished his marble roller-coaster on a magnetic wall and started a ball fight in the ball room.  Adam did really great the whole time, but Katie could tell he was ready to get home too.

Nicki at the water station.

Fill 'er up, Josh.

Adam must have liked that car.  He's still driving.

The older girls played in the grocery store for quite a while.

Josh the bear.

Pretty cool chopper.

Dave and Nicki are on a rescue mission.  They saved Joshua.

Yes, they're fighting to be on camera, but this green screen was amazing!  Ali's running the controls.  Can you see them on the screen in the upper right hand corner?

Josh doing a news broadcast.

We all took the train back together.  Adam had a really hard time waiting for the train to leave.  Bless his heart - he didn't understand why we were waiting.  Katie and Megan did a good job keeping him occupied and I just sat there feeling helpless and wishing the dang train would go for Adam's sake!!  As soon as we started moving, he went from almost hysteria to the most beautiful, peaceful smile.  He smiled the whole way home.  I love that perfect little boy, and his parents and sister too.  

We got off at the Farmington station.  Katie and her kids kept going all the way to Ogden, so we waved goodbye as the train took off.  When we got home, it was dinner time and bed time again.  That evening was the first time we really had to sit and visit much with my parents.

Vacation: Day Three

Day three of vacation was very fun and very tiring.  It started at around 8:30am.  That's when we left Grandma and Grandpa's house for the zoo.  We had to make a quick pit stop along the way to purchase another memory card for our camera.  We didn't put much thought into the fact that we'd be driving into Salt Lake City during morning rush hour.  That was an adventure.  I've turned into a country driver - traffic stresses me out! I knew David would get us to the zoo safely, I just wanted to be given a sedative so that I wouldn't see what was happening in the mean time.

He's a great driver, but I think he wished I'd mellow out a bit.

We arrived shortly after the zoo opened.  The last time we were at Hogle Zoo, Alison was Bronson's age.  None of the other kids had ever been there and the boys had never been to ANY zoo in their lives (unless you count Bear World's petting zoo, which I don't).  It's a pretty great place.  There were lots of fun, new things since the last time we went.  For some reason, they had a dinosaur theme running throughout the place this year and there were lots of animatronic dinos all over the place.  One of them even squirted water on passers by.  How fun is that?  The kids ran from exhibit to exhibit "Oooh-ing"  and "Ahhh-ing" and occasionally "Eeeew-ing" when the animals did something gross. 

The baby elephant.

We all loved the giraffes.

Once Nicki fell off a curb she was balancing on and scraped her knee.  She was crying and wanting a Band-Aid.  Suddenly, Alison piped up with, "I've got a Band-Aid."  I guess when she packed her little backpack of toys at home, she thought ahead and packed a first-aid kit.  It was basically a few Band-Aids and alcohol wipes in a Ziploc baggie.  Then, she remembered to put that first aid kit in our diaper bag when we went to the zoo.  What a life saver!

Ali's first aid kit saved the day.

After a couple of hours, the kids started to get tired.  Luckily for us, we only had a couple more animals to see.  At the end of our visit, we went to the playground which seemed to perk the kids right up.  It drove me mad!  There must have been a dozen schools on field trips to the zoo and I think ALL of them were at the playground at the same time.  It was like an ant hill!  Dad took the three older kids on a train ride while I fed Bronson his baby food.  After that, we said goodbye to the zoo.  It was only about noon, but the parking lot was PACKED, as was the street nearby.  We had cars circling us like vultures as we walked to the van.  I was glad we went early in the day.

Pretending we're gophers in the playground.

The girls on the train.

From the zoo, we drove across the street to the "This Is The Place Memorial Park" where we ate a quick picnic lunch in the van.   I'd been there once about 15 years ago on a date and I remember it being only a statue.  It's so much more than that now!  It's a whole village.  There are dozens of house and buildings.  Each one has a person or people doing something Pioneer-y.  We went at the end of their off-season so only about 10 houses were open.  We went into one cabin and the "mom" taught the kids how to make butter, how to clean clothes, how their beds are made, and where the kids slept at night.  She had her four year old son with her, also dressed in period clothes.  He was cute.  He was excited to show the kids how to beat a rug.  We also saw a blacksmith working on his wares.  He asked Alison to pay the money she owed him.  Then he wiped his glasses and said, "Oh, sorry.  I thought you were that other guy."  We met the saddle maker and played with the ducklings that were running around his shop.  We learned a lot from the school teacher about how school was set up and what they were taught (did you know Brigham Young developed his own alphabet?) and how they were disciplined.  We watched a woman spin wool into yarn.  That was fascinating.  And we went to a petting zoo where the kids each got to go for a free pony ride.  We also went for a free train ride around the entire park.  I'm telling you, I want to go again.  It was great. 

The kids were amazed by how hard everyone worked in pioneer times.

Churning butter.

Cowboy Josh on his horse ride.

We were done with everything the park had to offer around 3:30pm, but we found a fun play area for the kids.  They have a little "town" of about eight playhouses  and a wooden play train.  Our kids had a blast playing there and also rolling down the nearby grass hill.  They could have stayed there forever!  I think that sitting on the grass hill in the shade with a slight breeze, talking with David and a very happy, babbling baby while watching our kids joyfully play together in their little town was my single most favorite moment of the whole trip.  Just perfect. 

Nicki in front of the store in their game.

Conductor Alison.

We arrived back at Grandma and Grandpa's house just in time for a fantastic dinner that Grandma had made for us.  Seriously.  Sometimes I think I'm a good cook, but I don't hold a candle to my mother.  Before bed, the kids played a rousing game of Uno with Grandpa and Dad.  What a fun, memorable day we had!

The team  of Josh and Dad won this time.